Developers offer free iPhone application packaging

Installer.app locks out PXL package

Lots of drama in the iPhone development community since last night, and it all revolves around a decision that "lg," the developer of Installer.app, made to remove PXL from its list of installable applications. PXL is another package manager for iPhone (open source, while Installer.app is still free, but currently closed source), that works with either Breezy, iBrickr (for Windows), or any other PXL manager. A little while back, the PXL guys decided that the easiest way to get their packages onto the iPhone was to actually run through Installer.app, but lg, last night, apparently decided that he didn't want them doing that, and locked them out of the application.

And that, according to many iPhone developers, is not cool. The creators of NES.app, in response, have pulled their application from Installer.app completely, posting a notice on their site that "NES.app will no longer function from Installer.app or other third-party package installers that we believe are not trustworthy/secure. You will need to remove these tools to use NES.app."

TUAW spoke with drudge, the developer who originally wrote the package for PXL in Installer.app, and he makes it clear that this is a bad move for the iPhone community. "We need to grow and learn each step of the way," he told me in an email. "Releasing closed sourced apps at this stage in the game doesn't help anyone." But the problem, according to drudge, isn't that Installer.app is a closed source application. "The only problem is it is a centralized management system... meaning "lg" has the final say in what happens with any package." And when lg decides, as he did last night, that someone's out, everyone suffers.

lg has not commented on what happened yet, as far as we've heard. At this point, it sounds like everyone involved is trying to work towards a solution, and get the PXL package back in Installer.app (the alternative would be for PXL to create their own Installer.app type of program). As drudge also told us, "The community is only 2 months old so for developers to be taking sides... makes it harder on iPhone users and developers."

Thanks, drudge!

Update: They've reached a solution-- NullRiver (lg and the folks behind Installer.app) are going to create their own open source library for package management. Since PXL was created because Installer.app was closed source, another open source solution means PXL will likely not exist any longer.